


Scarred Ground

by DictionaryWrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abstract, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Dark, Episode 160: The Eye Opens (The Magnus Archives), Haunting, Horror, M/M, Melancholy, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Sad, The World Goes Wrong (The Magnus Archives), Time Loop, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21791737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: "You see," Elias said softly, "people always have this idea that only living things can be scarred - and they're right, of course. But a building is a living thing, Martin. And the ground can be scarred, too.""I don't have any scars," Martin said."Yes, you do," Elias said. "You just need the right light to see them."
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Martin Blackwood & Elias Bouchard, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 140
Kudos: 333





	1. Prologue

The Institute loomed.

Martin wasn’t sure how.

But he had learned the word “loom” quite recently, and it was the only one that seemed to fit.

It wasn’t an extremely large building – it was tall, but not nearly as tall as half of the skyscrapers or even larger buildings in the city, and it was made of a dark yellow sandstone that might have seemed gold in the sun, but the sun never seemed to shine when Martin looked at it. It was not on a hill, or even up a particularly tall flight of steps, but there was an energy to it, or lack of energy, somehow.

Even with scarcely any sun shining, the sky a clouded grey, the Institute cast a long, long shadow. It was oppressive.

The doors, which were huge, and tall, and wide, dark dark wood with dirty gold handles, were closed shut. Cobwebs formed at the corners of the stone that housed them, and Martin wondered how long it had been since they had been opened, if they were _ever_ opened anymore.

Not even the cobwebs had inhabitants – the spiders that had spun them were long, long gone.

“Come on, Martin,” Mum said, pulling on his hand, and he turned his head to look at her, at the slight bags under her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping, as of late, and he knew it didn’t help that he kept crawling into bed beside her, when the darkness in his own room was too dark, and things were creaking quietly under the floorboards of his bed. He wished they wouldn’t do that. It was hard to sleep, when his skin had pimpled out in goose bumps, and his heart was pounding in his chest, and he could scarcely breathe around the anvil on his chest. “We’re going to be late.”

“What do they do there?” Martin asked, and he pointed to the neat, bronzed plaque over the Institute’s entrance, underneath the silhouette of an etched bird’s face:

**THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE**

**EST. 1818**

**VIGILO · OPPERIOR · AUDIO**

“What?” his mother asked, and he watched her gaze flick toward the Institute, but her gaze didn’t land on the plaque, or focus on it. She didn’t even look up to the great stained glass window that spanned the length of the building, a huge eye made of bright white glass, a rainbow explosion of colour seeming to drip from around it.

Martin had actually thought it was a church, at first, when he’d first looked at it. Churches loomed sometimes, didn’t they? Abandoned churches on dark hills in foreboding English villages, in the middle of cemeteries that hadn’t interred a body for three hundred years.

The thought made him shiver.

He’d been thinking of cemeteries a lot, recently.

“_Martin_,” Mum hissed, irritated, impatient. She was more and more impatient with him, recently. “Let’s _go_.”

“Sorry, Mum,” Martin said, and let her pull him by the hand.

He looked back to the Institute as they went, and wondered where they’d keep their cemetery, if they had one.

Nan’s funeral was long, and boring, and sad in a bone-deep, cold way that didn’t make Martin want to cry, but did make him want to go home as soon as possible. It didn’t rain, which was strange – he always thought it was supposed to rain at funerals.

It didn’t rain until they went home, with all these strange people in their black clothes coming with them, people Martin had never known before and didn’t want to know, people who knew Nan, but now she was dead, and she wasn’t coming back.

Martin lay down in his bed, and when the things moved underneath his bed, making the floorboards creak, he was grateful, because they drowned out the noises of the people downstairs. Lying on his side in the dim – the rain blocked out what little light there had been, although it wasn’t yet six, and the drops came in fat and heavy and dully explosive against the glass of his window – he watched as the door to his bedroom creaked slowly, slowly shut.

When it clicked closed, he was in darkness, and the things got louder.

It wasn’t just the creak of the wooden boards. If it was just that, maybe he would have asked Mum for a carpet, or a rug, even though she would have gotten angry and said it cost too much money, because sometimes she said that and got what it was he had asked for anyway, from a charity shop, and she was angry about it, after, for a while, but it was never something he didn’t really _need_. He never asked for toys, or silly things like that, after all, it was never stuff he didn’t _need_.

Nan had been very good at explaining the difference between _need_ and _want_.

It wasn’t fair for her to be dead.

It wasn’t a wet noise. It was a dry noise, but a weird one that made his spine shiver and his littlest hairs stand on edge, a kind of rustling that was too smooth to be dry leaves, or paper. It made him think of bugs crawling over one another, or snakes sliding against one another, their dry scales making that noise…

It was so loud. He couldn’t hear anything except the writhing mass, and he wanted to say something, anything, to drown it out, but it was like all of the words had been buried with his Nan in the cemetery, like they were all deep under the earth where he couldn’t reach them. His tongue felt heavy as he felt the weight shift on his bed, the mass leaning on his mattress and crawling over his blankets, and they weren’t touching him just yet, but his mouth felt very, very dry, and they would touch him soon, and he didn’t want them to touch his skin, he didn’t want them to, he didn’t want them to, but where were the words?

What if he opened his mouth too late, and they crawled inside? What if he drowned in them?

He grabbed, grasped, lurched for whatever word he could find, but there weren’t any, there weren’t _any_…

Until he thought of the Magnus Institute, the sandstone wet on a grey day in Chelsea, darkly yellow under an anaemic sun. 

“The Magnus Institute,” he choked out, his voice hoarse and parched and papery, like he’d been swallowing parchment. The noises quivered, stuttering in their places. “Established eighteen-eighteen. Vigilo,” (Was that how to pronounce it? He wasn’t sure. It was Latin, he thought, it was Latin, except Latin was an old old language they spoke in ancient times, or that posh people used, it wasn’t—) “Opperior… Audio.”

Maybe the noise took a while to stop. He wasn’t sure. He just squeezed his eyes very tightly shut, so that he couldn’t even see the shadows in the room, and he said the words on the plaque again and again and again, and imagined the big eye in stained glass, and the bird carved jagged into the bronze like someone had gone at it with a knife, and the words…

He must have fallen asleep, at some point.

When he woke, his room was very quiet, and felt empty in a way it never had before.

\--

Martin’s feet ached. He’d been walking around London all day, putting his CV in with everyone that would take it, and his phone was nearly dead, but he just wanted to get it in a few more places before he walked back home. It wasn’t that he was avoiding home – he wasn’t avoiding it at all. Mum would be, should be, in a relatively good mood anyway, because it was a Friday, and she was usually in a good mood on Fridays, so long as she hadn’t stumbled badly in the day, and as long as she’d been able to eat enough.

She was thin, though. Thinner than she had been, than he remembered her being, and he tried to get her to eat, he _tried_, even cooked soups and stews and shepherd’s pie and things that didn’t take all that much swallowing, but she didn’t—

He didn’t like the way she looked at him, sometimes.

That was all.

And it wasn’t his fault that he’d been made redundant. It wasn’t his fault, not really, because they hadn’t actually kept on _any_ of the floor staff, not even Rob Shaw, and all the management had loved Rob Shaw, so it wasn’t his fault—

But Mum… It wasn’t that she said it. Just that he could tell she didn’t see it that way.

He stopped in front of the Magnus Institute, looking up at its stained glass window, at the tarnished bronze plaque, at the cobwebbed doors. He stopped here, now and then, on the cloudy days when he was passing through Chelsea.

Sometimes, he tried to come over on sunny days, specifically to see what the sandstone looked at under the sun, but he always got waylaid somehow – there was an accident or traffic, or he got called home by Mum, or he got distracted, and forgot, and went to run errands, or do something else.

The sun had cleaved through a gap in the cloud as if it had used a knife, and it landed on the Magnus Institute in one sharp blade of light, making the yellow stone seem not golden, but alive, somehow, as though it were breathing. It almost seemed to be rising and falling, as if it were breathing, and Martin imagined if he put his fingers to it, he’d feel the beat of the gargantuan heart beneath.

The rainbow shards of glass that decorated the eye weren’t rainbows anymore – they were white, an incandescent white that hurt his eyes a little, but didn’t make him want to look away. It was a dull ache, a comforting one, as he made his way up the few steps toward the doors, which were as dark and foreboding as ever. The cobwebs seemed to shy away, crawling of their own accord away from the hinges as he slid his hands around the golden handles of the door and pulled.

He stepped slowly inside, looking around the vaulted ceiling of the entrance hall, at the wooden designs carved into the siding and the dido rails – wooden designs of ships, he thought, or maybe just of waves. You could barely see the ships in amongst them.

The reception area was hauntingly empty. An old-fashioned desk was settled in the middle of a green carpet, its great leather chair invitingly without an inhabitant, and Martin leaned over, looking at the papers scattered on the desk, a pen still resting beside a blotter, as though the clerk had only just gotten up to get a cup of tea, and was going to be back in a moment.

The scent of dust was conspicuously absent, and his footsteps made no echo as he moved down the corridor. There were closed doors to rooms as he made his way down it, but for some reason, none of them really called to him, got his interest, and the bronze plaques in their centre were blank, as though waiting for names to be etched on them.

The corridor did not turn, or twist, but somehow, it felt as though it were curving, going very, very deep, and it felt as though he were underground, somehow. He didn’t know why it should feel like that, only that there was a strange and uncertain feeling of a great, great weight above his head, that if it fell, he would be entirely buried.

He stopped in a room that had shelves spanning in all directions, all of them empty. There were no cobwebs, no dust, just empty shelves, as though they had been full to the brim with books only the day before, and everything had been moved out.

“Ah, Martin,” said a voice behind him, and Martin didn’t turn, his fingers brushing over the dark wood of an empty shelf. “You’re late. I wanted the Manteau statement by eleven.”

“Sorry, Mr Bouchard,” Martin said dully, as if working to a script, his mouth moving without his body’s full permission. “It wasn’t in the Archives. Not that I could find, anyway.”

“Jon must have taken it home with him,” said the voice. It echoed funnily in his ears. “Would you mind terribly, going to collect it?”

“I’m not supposed to disturb the Archivist, Mr Bouchard.”

“You won’t disturb him,” said the voice, almost against the back of his neck, its breath hot. Martin’s stomach gave a nervous flip. “He _likes_ you, Martin.”

Martin turned his head.

The Institute was empty, and he was alone.


	2. Chapter One

He put his CV in a few more places. The faces in every shop seemed even more blank than any of the ones that had come before, blank and featureless, and as soon as he turned his eyes away, he forgot every feature of the person he’d been speaking to. He remembered the expressions they made – distant pity, distaste as they took the CV from his shaking fingers, vague superiority…

He kept walking. It was a bright day, now, the cloud burned away by the sun, but it wasn’t very warm, and he wished he had a coat, maybe like the one Peter Lukas had given him when he’d co-opted Martin as his assistant, the first time.

He didn’t seek out the door. He must have, in order to get to it, because it was inside a tall apartment block, and he must have either scaled a lot of stairs, or ridden in the lift. He didn’t remember the lift. He couldn’t visualise it in his mind’s eye, no matter how he tried, and when he tried to visualize stairs, they morphed and changed – wooden stairs with brass railings; green linoleum stairs; the stairs in his Nan’s house, faded green carpet; stairs on the Tundra, with steel grips on them so that you didn’t slip even when the sea was foaming onto the deck.

He’d never been on a boat before. He wondered what it was like.

He didn’t ring the bell, or knock.

The door just opened, and Jon leaned heavily on the door, scowling at him. He had tied a piece of red fabric over his eyes, so tightly that it was bruising the side of his face, and Martin winced in sympathy, reaching to touch, but Jon’s hand clasped around his wrist.

Jon’s hand looked so strange, like this. Blank, unscarred.

“Don’t undo it,” he said hoarsely.

“You’ve tied it too tightly,” Martin said. “It’s hurting you.”

“It will hurt me more if it’s too loose,” Jon muttered, and he came away from the door, stumbling into the room. Martin stepped in after him, closing the door shut.

He looked around the simply furnished room – simple, but elegant in a way the man before him wasn’t. He was a stranger. Martin was certain of that, that he was a stranger, but unlike the people in the shops and the street outside in the bright, cold sun, he could see this man’s chapped, dark lips; he could see this man’s black stubble and unhealthy, strangely pallid skin; he could see this man’s hazel-flecked eyes under the red abrasion of the tie around his head.

“Don’t do that,” the man complained. “I hate it when you _look_ at me.”

“Sorry,” Martin said, without much feeling. He did _feel_ it, though. A sort of ghost of hurt, the hurt he would feel if he knew this man, if they laid side-by-side in a bed together and kissed and loved one another, if he knew what his scars were like under all that skin. “Who are you?”

“I’m not in the mood for that today,” the man snapped, and collapsed onto his sofa. For being blind, he was not clumsy: he moved with ease around the room, stepping over piles of stacked files and undrunk cups of tea and cups of whiskey and cups of coffee and cups of mixtures of some of the three. Martin’s heart ached to look at him. “Why don’t you go find _Peter_, if you want to play that game?”

It was a jealous voice. Angry, and dark, and jealous.

Martin wasn’t accustomed to people feeling jealous over him. He didn’t believe it had ever happened before.

I’ve never been on a boat before,” Martin said softly.

Jon scoffed. “Oh, of _course_ you haven’t,” he muttered, and Martin took a few steps forward, pushing the coffee table aside so that there was space for him to kneel down beside the sofa, and put his hand in Jon’s hair. It was greasy and lank, but he didn’t pull away, gently stroking his fingers through the dark tresses, curling the grey ones around his fingers.

The scowl on the man’s face faded, becoming a softer frown, and he pressed his forehead into Martin’s hand, his eyes closed under the blindfold. It was… strange. Surreally, he felt as though he knew what he should say next, but couldn’t quite tug out the meaning behind the words, where they’d come from.

Déja vu surrounded him like a shroud.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Martin reminded him softly. “But it wasn’t mine, either.”

“I know,” Jon said lowly. “Sorry. Will you stay? For a while?”

“I don’t remember you,” Martin admitted.

“I don’t care if you do it in the wrong order,” Jon said. His breathing was a little shallow, and Martin stared at his face, unable to shake the sudden feeling that there was something missing from it. Gently, he slid his hands around Jon’s shoulders and pulled him up, sitting down on the sofa, and Jon immediately fell against his shoulder, pressing his forehead against him, his nose pushing into the wool of Martin’s cardigan.

“Is there a right order?” Martin asked. “Is there— Is there an order?”

“Sort of,” Jon said. “There was, in the beginning. I don’t know, anymore. It’s chaos.” His fingers curled tightly against Martin’s sleeve, and a part of Martin he was a bit ashamed of swelled with warmth at the wonder of a man wanting to be so _close_ to him, cramming himself against Martin’s side as though he were comforting, worth loving. “You are worth loving,” said Jon. “I do love you.”

The warmth was confused, now.

It swelled hot and huge and filled his chest to bursting, but a trembling cold also ran down his spine. Not fear, per se, but discomfort, uncertainty.

“Can you read minds?” Martin asked.

“I hate this part,” Jon said lowly, in the voice of one all too accustomed to the conversation, even though Martin’s head was spinning, a stranger holding onto him like he was the man’s only anchor, all this talk about _order_, and this man could read what he was thinking, just skim it off the top of his head? “I’m sorry, Martin. I know you’re frightened, and confused, and that it’s hard, but I just… I can’t. Not right now.”

“That’s alright,” Martin said, hoping that was the right thing to say, wrapping an arm loosely around Jon’s shoulder, squeezing.

Jon laughed, lowly, woodenly. “See, Martin,” he said, “that’s how I know you’re at the beginning again. _That’s alright_ is very much the Martin of old. As if old even means anything anymore.”

“When I was eight years old,” Martin said, “there were things in my bedroom. Every night, they’d swarm under my bed, rustling against one another. They slithered. Like snakes.”

“Yeah,” Jon said. He paused, for a moment, and then he sat up, reaching up and pulling at the knot at the back of his head, tugging it free. Martin averted his eyes when the blindfold fell away, unwilling to look at Jon’s eyes for reasons he couldn’t explain – reasons that were scripted, just some of the things he was saying, reasons decided for him. “How did you make them go away?”

The voice was… different, now. Lower. More resonant. More serious, more _grave_.

He felt it settle over him. It was heavy, dragging over his body, tugging at his lips, his mouth, gently trying to push him into talking. It wasn’t aggressive, wasn’t actually an unpleasant feeling – it felt _warm_. Nice.

“Put the blindfold back on, Jon,” Martin said softly.

\--

Something was following him.

Martin was walking home. He’d been walking home for quite some time, now, he thought. The streets didn’t look familiar, and as he walked down them he recognised none of the street signs, none of the doors, none of the turnings or roundabouts. There _were_ street signs, he was certain, but when he looked at them, whatever was written on them seemed to come right through his head and out the other side, fizzling into the ether.

He should be scared.

He knew that, that he should be scared. He’d been walking for at least a few hours in a London he didn’t know, and there was something following him. He was reasonably certain it was a _something_, and not a someone.

“Maaaar-tin,” it called, its voice sounding distorted and wrong, echoing in his ears. “_Maaaar_-tin!”

“I’m busy,” Martin said.

“_Martin!”_ it complained, sounding wounded, as wounded as a monster could sound. “Don’t you remember me, _Maaartin_? We used to have such _fun!”_

“I have to get home,” Martin said. “My mother’s waiting.”

“Your mother?” the monster repeated, confused. “I thought she was dead.”

Martin’s blood ran very, very cold, and he felt so sick he could cry. “I need to get home,” he repeated, biting out the words.

\--

It let him out at the Magnus Institute.

He didn’t bother to complain, or argue. He just moved up the steps and into the building, bidding Rosie a muted hello as he moved past her desk and down the corridor, taking off his coat as he went. He hung it up on the coat rack, next to Peter’s, but the desk was empty.

“Is he dead?” he asked when Elias came into the room, brushing his fingers over the navy blue fabric of Peter’s coat. It was still damp, but from rain or from sea spray, he wasn’t sure.

“I’m afraid so,” Elias said, setting the folders in his arms down on the desk. “But death is a finality somewhat contingent on time, which is proving rather flexible as of recent. How are you feeling?”

“I spoke with Jon,” Martin said. “I didn’t actually mean to go to his flat. I just sort of… ended up there. He was impatient.”

“He’s overfed, as of recent,” Elias said. “It puts him in a bad mood.”

“I didn’t feed him,” Martin said.

Elias looked at him over the lenses of his glasses, his eyebrows raising. “Do you know what that means?” he asked simply.

“No,” Martin said. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Not just yet,” Elias said. “You’ll have a nasty headache, if I do.”

“Like you care about whether I’m in pain or not.”

Elias shrugged his shoulders.

The door opened, and when Peter saw Martin, he beamed.

“Martin!” he said, and then he reached for him, patting his cheek. He did it a little too hard, making the skin sting, and Martin slapped his hand away. “You were wearing the coat I gave you!”

“It’s cold,” Martin muttered, and Peter’s hand carded in his hair, tugging at it, scratching loosely at the scalp. It felt… nice. Martin slapped his hand away again, and Peter laughed, reaching for Elias instead, who put his hand in the centre of Peter’s chest to keep him from getting close enough to touch him. “What do I do now?” Martin asked.

“Your cot is where it usually is,” Elias said. “You can try going home if you wish. But where, I wonder, will you end up? Your dilapidated little flat? Jon’s? Your mother’s old house? The nursing home? You could land anywhere at all, Martin.”

“Does Jon… Jon works here,” Martin said. “Why isn’t he here?”

“The man is forcefed all hours of the day, and you would bring him to a buffet?” Elias asked, his tone low and coy.

“All alone in that flat of his,” Peter said, his eyes distant, his tone full of a mix of melancholy and what sounds like relish, as if he’s savouring the taste of something delicious. “Watching everyone, and without _anyone_.”

“Yes, Peter,” Elias said blankly, rolling his eyes. “How wonderfully lonely we are.”

Martin stepped out of the office, and made his way down the corridor. He walked past Sasha, and Tim, and Sasha, and Melanie, and Basira, and Daisy, and Georgie. They all passed him in the corridors, not even glancing his way. They were the people he recognised, anyway – there were other people that he didn’t know, didn’t recognise, except that he didn’t recognise any of them.

His head hurt.

“I’m meant to be applying for jobs,” he said to Elias as he sat down on the edge of the cot.

“You have a job,” Elias said quietly. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was leaning back on the doorframe. “Once you sleep, you’ll feel better. You’ll digest a lot of it as you dream.”

“How many times have I… done this?” Martin asked. “Jon said he wasn’t in the mood for it. As if we’d done this a lot of times before.”

“It’s affected us all differently,” Elias said. “Some more strongly than others.”

“Are we… together? Me and Jon, I mean.”

Elias sighed. “Yes,” he said, tone bored. “I suppose so.”

“Oh,” Martin said.

“Sleep,” Elias said. “You’ll feel better.”

“Do you care?” Martin asked. “What I feel?”

Elias stared down at him, his face a mask. “Good night, Martin,” he said lowly, and stepped out of the room.


	3. Chapter Two

Martin’s sleep was dreamless, but when he woke, his head felt a little bit clearer. Lying on the cot and looking at the breakroom, at the little white fridge with the scuffs on the base of the door, the abused toaster and microwave on the side, the two kettles side by side, he sighed… The sofa and two chairs were a light, sunny yellow, and Martin knew without touching them that the fabric was coarse even though the cushions themselves would let you sink right into them.

He remembered…

He was an assistant at the Magnus Institute. The world was… weird. Wrong.

What did he remember?

He remembered Jon. Jon, skinny and borderline-emaciated, with scars pockmarking his face and his arms, with cuts and jagged rips scarring his chest and thighs and shoulders; Jon, with slick-wet burned flesh scarred into his hand. Jon, his eyes closed, sleeping peacefully, his breath a warm ghost on Martin’s skin, one hand loosely curled around Martin’s wrist. He remembered Jon, reading aloud from a book of poetry in a honeysweet voice as Martin put his fingers through his hair, massaging the scalp and making Jon laugh now and then, saying, “You’re distracting me.”

He remembered Peter. He remembered drowning in the Lonely, but it was a nice way to drown, at the time, cold and comforting, seeping into his mouth and filling his lungs, settling over his skin, and it was so nice, all alone, so serene, so _peaceful_.

He remembered Jon’s hands clutching his neck, cupping the underside of his jaw, Jon’s breath on his lips and Jon’s eyes staring into his; he remembered Peter screaming, screaming, dying; he remembered his mother’s funeral.

Wrong order.

Standing slowly to his feet, he realized that he was actually in pyjamas – they were a dark blue, made of flannel, and he was wearing Jon’s dressing gown on top. It was too short, and only just belted across his middle, tight on his shoulders, but it was decadently soft.

He stared down at his slippered feet, and was certain that he had never worn pyjamas, when he’d been staying in the Institute – had he? He didn’t think. He hadn’t slept in pyjamas, or in his underwear. He hadn’t slept that much, actually. A lot of the time, he’d been too scared, too frightened, of the worms.

He’d been scared of everything.

He was walking down the corridor in the Institute – corridors that he vaguely knew were above the library, and in the corridor he brushed shoulders with Elias, who looked at him with coffee-coloured eyes and a posh, pleasant smugness that made Martin recoil. He was far, far too young.

“Where’s Elias?” he asked, and Elias’ smile faded, settling into a small frown.

“It wasn’t fair,” he said softly. It was a surprisingly sweet voice, higher than Martin was used to, and there was a solemnness in it that Martin had never heard before. “And it did hurt. It would have hurt you too, you know. It would have been agony, until it wasn’t anymore.”

“Where is he?” Martin asked again, surprised by his own impatience, and then the corridor was empty, and he was walking down it again, down darkly wooded halls with old-fashioned brocade and oil lamps instead of electric lights.

He knocked on the door, before he entered.

“Come in,” Elias called, and Martin stepped inside.

The bedroom was plushly furnished. A royal pattern was beautifully laid into the carpet, and there was an armoire, a chest of drawers, two end tables either side of the four-poster bed. The blankets were a deep red, gold tassels patterning the edges of it, and Elias was sitting up against the headboard, a wooden tray in his lap, a pair of reading glasses on his nose.

“Feeling better?” Elias asked, not looking up from his paperwork, but Martin knew he still saw it when Martin nodded his head. “Well, Martin, I’m afraid you can’t crawl into bed with Daddy. There’s no room.”

There was another shape in the bed beside Elias, a heavy lump under the red covers, bigger than Elias was.

“I don’t remember,” Martin said softly, taking a step forward. “What happened?”

“You will remember,” Elias said, and the lump beside him shifted, Peter’s head rising from the pillows. His brightly blue eyes looked duller with sleep, and he glanced at Martin, half-smiling and opening his mouth. Elias’ hand gripped him by the hair and pushed him back down onto the cushion, but he didn’t stop Peter from leaning closer, pressing his nose against Elias’ side.

“Used to crawl into bed with your mummy, didn’t you?” Peter asked in a rumble, his voice smug.

“Most children do when they have nightmares, Peter,” Martin said dryly. “It’s different, I suppose, when you _are_ the nightmare.” Peter _did_ sit up at that, frowning, and Martin felt the shame run cold down into his belly, his lips parting, his shoulders shaking slightly. He inhaled, and then said, “Um. Sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”

“Oh,” Peter said, disappointed, his lips pouting slightly. He was wearing a silk pyjama shirt, but it wasn’t buttoned, and Martin could see the black and silver mass of his chest hair, the hairs on his belly. “I preferred him with a backbone.”

“It will grow back,” Elias said reassuringly, but as it was Elias, it didn’t sound reassuring at all. He was looking at Martin now, his expression thoughtful, and Martin crossed his arms over his chest, squeezing his elbows as though it would help. “Do you _really_ want to get into bed with us, Martin?”

“No,” Martin said.

He wanted to be in Jon’s bed, wanted to be able to hold Jon against his chest and bury his face in his hair. It had taken a long time, hadn’t it? He’d wanted him for so long, had yearned and pined and fidgeted when Jon snapped at him and got impatient, because it was sort of easier, that way, when Jon hated him a little bit and kept him at arm’s length, because it meant it wasn’t complicated. It meant he didn’t have to get any further, it meant he didn’t have to get to the inevitable point where whoever it was got bored of him and they drifted apart.

Except that Jon wasn’t getting bored of him, now. Jon wouldn’t get bored of him.

“I can hardly stop you,” Elias said softly, “but I wouldn’t advise seeking out Jon’s flat just now, Martin. You’re tired. Vulnerable.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” Peter purred. “There’s room.”

“The worms in my bedroom,” Martin said, “when I was a little boy. They shouldn’t have been there.”

“It affects us all differently,” Elias said for a second time, his voice quiet and low. “You’re a bit different to the rest of us, I’m afraid. We either cling to our anchors, or oscillate between anchored points, but you keep starting the journey over and over. You cling to the linear, Martin, even though it isn’t there to cling to any longer.”

“I saw Elias in the corridor,” Martin said.

“You’d think he’d be more grateful,” Elias said, a deliberate nastiness in his voice that made Martin’s heart clench and mad him grit his teeth slightly together. “His very own body, able to walk around, entertain himself, and so on.”

“You’re such a—” Martin cut himself off, even as Peter leaned forward, obviously eager to hear whatever word was going to come out of his mouth next. Peter pouted again, and then turned to the side, taking the wooden tray from his lap and setting it on the end table. He took the papers from Elias’ hand, and the pen from his other, as Elias sighed. He did not look angry. He did not look displeased. He just looked accepting, perhaps vaguely put-up, as he leaned into the touch of Peter’s rising hand. 

“Time to go, Martin,” Peter said as he cupped Elias’ cheek, pulling Elias to face him, and Elias reached up, taking off his glasses and setting them aside. He was looking into Peter’s eyes, and Martin was assaulted with the memory of what Peter’s eyes looked at that close up, at the sea-green, white-sprayed turbulence of them, the colour in them that always used to make his mouth taste like salt. “Unless you want to join us?” Peter asked, and Elias scowled.

“You’re insufferable,” Elias said, just before Peter kissed him with a wet smack of sound, and Martin went out of the room, closing the door hard behind him. He stood there, just for a moment, and he thought about Elias and Peter on the other side, remembered what Peter’s lips felt like – chapped and tasteless, his stubble scratching at his cheeks.

He hadn’t wanted it, he didn’t think.

He couldn’t remember, exactly, but he’d wanted _someone_, hadn’t wanted _Peter_, and Peter had always laughed at the incongruity of it, that Martin should want for somebody to touch him but not for Peter to, except that Peter would do, he’d take Peter, if he couldn’t have—

Except that… That wasn’t the first time, was it?

He didn’t think so.

He remembered the first time. He thought, maybe. He remembered long, long periods of being alone, of seeing nobody except Peter, disappearing into the Lonely so that no one else would bother him, he didn’t want anybody to bother him, anybody to touch him, nobody at all – and so nobody had.

Things crossed over one another. Things had been different, and then the same, and then different again, before being ironed out into nothing.

\--

“Stop moping,” Tim said as Martin came into the Archives. He was dressed again, now, although he didn’t remember getting dressed.

“I’m not moping,” Martin said.

“_Sure_,” Tim said.

He was so handsome. Martin looked at him – looked down at him, just slightly, because Martin had an inch or two on him, although they couldn’t be more different in every other aspect. Martin was big and broad and softly made, fat and prone to wearing thick wools he could huddle in, which his mother always said made him look bigger than he was in scornful tones; he had freckles and moles, little imperfections on his skin. Tim was… Tim was different. His body was all but _triangular_, wide shoulders and a narrow waist, and he wore the tightest clothes he could find so that you could see all the definition in his chest and his arms and his legs and his arse, as if someone had chiselled him out of marble.

“I’m sorry you died,” Martin said, and Tim’s handsome features shifted from a distant frown into a nasty smile.

“Just remembered that, did you?” Tim asked, arching his eyebrows and crossing his perfect arms over his perfect chest. “You always get so _sad_. Every time, Martin. It kinda gets old.”

“Nice to see that dying hasn’t made you less of a bitch,” Martin said, and Tim laughed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Tim said softly, reaching out and brushing two knuckles under Martin’s chin. It wasn’t a super intimate gesture, to Martin’s surprise – it didn’t feel uncomfortably romantic or sexual, or like there were any overtones to it at all. It was friendly. A little gesture that said, _Hey. Buck up_. Martin felt himself smile, albeit wanly. “I never got to see Martin with the big balls and the ability to bite back. He’s good, I like him.”

Tim drew his hand back, and then said, “I don’t know how many times you’ve done this. But it’s different every time. You did the first time all the way through, linearly, because it was the first time, and then the end came. And then, the first few times after that, you always did it linearly too – it was a little different, sometimes, we died at different times or died differently, or things went wrong or went right in different ways, but you started at the start, and you finished at the end. Then, it all went a bit… Wobbly. Like, this time, you’re kind of dipping in and out.”

“I told Jon it wasn’t my fault,” Martin said.

“Good,” Tim said. “It wasn’t. This is all his fault.”

Martin gave Tim a reproachful look, and said, “No, it isn’t.”

Tim huffed.

“Peter and Elias,” Martin said, and Tim laughed.

“A few hundred years, _that’s_ been going on,” Tim said. “Even before time chose to give up the ghost. Doesn’t mean Peter won’t stick his massive cock into anything that moves.”

“How do you know how big his cock is?” Martin asked, arching his eyebrows, but he regretted it as soon as he saw Tim’s smile, a rictus of perfectly straight teeth and harshly pulled lips, dark eyes that were handsome and that should have been empty.

“I’m dead, Martin,” Tim replied, then wiggled his fingers in a little wave. “Still moving though, aren’t I?”

Martin took a step forward, and then he reached out. Tim groaned, but he didn’t actually pull away as Martin pulled him into a hug, pressing his face against one of Tim’s shoulders, squeezing him and then _lifting_ him off the ground a bit. Tim actually laughed at that, leaning all his weight on Martin as Martin put him down.

“Not many people can do that,” Tim said. “Lift me up.”

“Peter can, I bet,” Martin said.

Tim scoffed. “Peter isn’t a person, Martin. Nor is Elias – nor is Jon. They’re not people, anymore. They chose to give it up.”

He leaned back slightly, his hands on Martin’s shoulders, his expression suddenly serious in a way Martin didn’t really like. Tim had never really looked serious before, not serious like this, not solemn – he had been serious, been grave, in an angry way, a tired way, a trapped way, the serious of a man backed into a corner, the grave of a man who was bound for the grave. Now he was serious in a way that wasn’t just self-defence.

“You know, Martin,” Tim said softly, “you’ve always chosen to be a person. You’ve always chosen not to give it up. Not to the Web, not to the Beholding, not to the Distortion, not to the Endless, not to the Lonely. You do it again and again and again, a little bit differently every time, and they all come up to brush against you and touch you and put their marks on you, and you always choose to be a person instead. Why do you do that?”

“You wouldn’t?” Martin asked, and Tim shrugged.

“Never got the choice,” he said. “But the Eye had its hooks too deep in me. If I chose not to be a person, I’d have to just choose to go deeper in. That’s fucked up, isn’t it? You’re on a leash and Jonah Magnus is at the other end, and you can choose to either hang yourself with it or go crawl into his lap.”

“It isn’t Jonah Magnus,” Martin said. “He’s just… an avatar. Like any of the rest.”

“None of the other avatars ever fucked the world in two,” Tim said. “He isn’t like the rest.”

“Why do you let Peter Lukas touch you?” Martin asked, softly.

“You asking because you care,” Tim asked, “or because you let him touch _you_, and can’t remember why?”

Martin was quiet for a time.

“You should go see your boyfriend,” Tim said, with bitterness that left a foul taste in Martin’s mouth. “Don’t you worry about me.”

\--

“Are you Sasha,” Martin asked, “or Sasha?”

Sasha stared at him, her lips shifting into a small smile, her head tilting to the side. “What do you mean, Martin?” she asked. Her voice was too sweet.

“Right,” Martin said, and walked past her.

When he found Sasha, he threw his arms around her, and hugged her as tightly as he dared.

“Oh, Martin,” she said softly. “How many times do I have to say it? It wasn’t your fault.”

“Is there any work to do?” he asked softly, his voice very quiet, slightly dry, and she leaned back, patted his shoulder. They didn’t even look anything alike, her and the Not-Sasha. Not really. Not even approximately.

“You could make me a cup of tea,” Sasha said, giving him a lopsided smile, and Martin swallowed as he nodded his head.

\--

When he saw the door, which was painted a bloodied red, the paint peeling, the hinges a bloody-piss rust colour, he knocked on it. It opened with a slow, slow creak, and Martin looked into the face of Helen, its face smiling.

“It was Michael, before,” Martin said.

“We _share_,” Helen said, and behind it Martin saw a hundred eldritch-long, limby monsters, some of them made of static, some of them made of tangled ribbon, some of them looking as if they’d been made of pencil scratches on paper, some of them looking as if they’d crawled right down from a cave painting long, long ago, made up of spots and lines and fractals. “What do you want, Martin?”

“I wanted to go see Jon,” Martin said, “but when I leave the Archive, I step into the gaps. Because Jon’s flat is anchored, and the Institute is anchored, but the bits in between aren’t.”

Helen smiled. Its smile was far too wide.

“You want to climb between scars using scar as a bridge,” it said brightly. “This time you’re learning very, _very_ quickly, Martin.”

“Can I have Michael, please?” Martin asked. “You’re— You’re more…”

“Jon’s than yours?” Helen asked, sweetly. “It would have been nice, you know,” it said, patting his shoulder with knife-blade fingers that made his skin sting. “If you’d joined us.”

“Will you take me home?” Martin asked, and Michael’s smile was not at all kind, when it appeared in Helen’s place, and offered Martin its sharp, sharp hand.

“Come on, Maaaartin,” Michael whispered, and the sea of limby bodies parted before them, falling into the two-dimensional space of the walls and becoming three-dimensional all over again, making Martin’s head ache.

When he got to Jon’s flat, though, he moved through the perfectly neat, perfectly tidy space, and toed off his shoes, climbing into bed alongside him. Jon was already sleeping, his chest slowly rising and falling, and instead of pores, he had a million tiny eyes, all closed in sleep.

“Jon,” Martin whispered, and Jon curled into his side, pressing a head full of eyes into Martin’s chest and snoring softly in his sleep.


	4. Chapter Three

Martin was drowning in earth.

It came down on top of him in heavy, wet clumps of muddied filth, and that it was wet was worse than if it were dry, clinging to his every inch of skin, against the back of his ears, the back of his neck, around the sockets of his eyes, his nose. When he tried to gasp, he only swallowed wet earth, and he tasted mud as the clod came onto his tongue, down his throat, landing in clumps so heavily into his lungs that he felt each one drop.

And yet, he wouldn’t die.

He wanted to.

Oh, God, oh, _God_, he wanted to—

But he wouldn’t _die_.

His body hurt. His shoulders were aching, his arms were aching, his chest, the soil packing down on top of him, the immensity of the weight not having the good grace, the kindness, to just kill him, and—

\--

Martin’s feet were aching. He was running, this time, running as fast as he could, his heart pounding in his chest, his trainers making loud slapping sounds against the flat expanse of the basement’s long hallways. His chest ached, burned, and his shoulders hurt too as he moved them, as if the rhythm of his arms would help him run any faster, get any quicker as he came fast through the hallways.

When he turned sharply on his heel to move around a corner, his trainers let out a squeal of protesting cheap rubber, and it didn’t even _matter_.

It was chasing him.

It was coming for him, coming for him, he could hear it rushing in behind him, feel its eyes boring into his back no matter how fast he ran, no matter how many corners he rounded, so matter how much his muscles ached and his chest stung and his lungs protested.

If he let it catch him—

\--

He would be flesh.

Martin was suspended with the cuffs too tight around his wrists, but the cuffs around his ankles were tighter still, and it was those he was suspended from, the hook running through the chain and stopping him from swinging in his place, too heavy, too _heavy_.

He stared up at his own body, at his blood-wet clothes clinging so closely to him, drenched in it and wet, and the knives glinted so beautifully in the soft light that eked in through what passed for windows in this basement abattoir, so shiny, and how beautiful they were, how wonderful it would be to give in and become—

\--

Burnt.

All was burnt, or burning – the scent of it was so thick on the air so as to be almost solid, a black mass of smoke that sought to block out the world itself, so that the darkness would be all encompassing and complete were it not that he knew there was _fire_, only that it was entirely lightless.

And how it burnt.

How it burnt, and charred, and made desolate his every inch of skin – the agony was stupendous, but that was nothing compared to the _smell_ of his flesh crackling and burning and bubbling and cooking, lit so hot that it melted in rivulets that ran down his arms, his legs, his chest, leaving only bone that was baked so hot it would be dust, and that bone—

\--

—was all there was.

Martin stared down at his own hands, fleshless, fatless, skinless. Not even nerves saw fit to coil around the stark, yellow bone that made up his palms, his fingers, the cold inescapable and implacable and impossible, for this was death, and it had come for him.

\--

When Martin woke up, he was wearing thick, yellow flannel pyjamas, and he was alone in bed. It was Jon’s bed, though. Their bed. The brown leather bedframe and the expensive sheets that Jon had had when Martin had moved in – not just the first time, but all the times afterward – underneath Martin’s old-fashioned patchwork quilts, brightly red and yellow and blue and green and completely at odds with the muted, almost chic browns and greys that Jon decorated his flat with, not because Jon had any taste (by his own admission) or stylistic preference (by his own confession), but simply because he decorated based on what he saw in catalogues, when he knew the whole picture looked alright.

Martin’s things seemed at odds, next to Jon’s, and yet as he slowly pulled himself off of the bed and put his feet into his slippers, he felt so completely and utterly at home.

Jon was in the living room, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, one knee up with his foot flat against the floor, the other leg out. He wore black pyjama bottoms – the sort of pyjamas Martin associated with extremely old men in hospitals – and a t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a Vogon, and the caption beneath, _UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES…_

It was Martin’s t-shirt.

It was so big on Jon that Martin could see the intoxicatingly sharp angles of his collarbones, his neck, the scars at his chest, the dusting of grey and black hair at the top of his flat, skinny chest. Jon had a sketchpad rested against one of his legs, and there were scattered pencils beside him on the rug that Martin had bought, not Jon, because it was bright yellow and patterned with a lemon shape, and didn’t match anything at all, but was so comfortable to sit on that Jon sat on it all the time.

Martin remembered that, sometimes. Sometimes Martin would sit on the sofa and listen to the radio, or read, or write, and Jon would sit on the floor on Martin’s lemon rug, his shoulders bracketed by Martin’s knees, or his head resting on Martin’s thigh. Sometimes, he’d kneel and massage Martin’s legs, dig his clever fingers into Martin’s calves and ankles or massage his feet as Martin squirmed and choked and told him it was _ticklish_ and don’t _stop_, Jon, Christ—

Sometimes, Martin would stroke his hair.

How many nights like that? Hundreds. Hundreds, thousands of nights in what passed for domestic bliss in a world populated by monsters. Nights when they lived together, always together in Jon’s flat instead of Martin’s shitty one. Martin supposed that just made sense, that Martin would want to move into Jon’s flat rather than the other way around.

But… Not the first time.

The first time, Martin never made it to Jon’s flat. He remembered that, now.

Jon had dragged him out of the Lonely, Peter’s corpse left adrift in their wake, and they had gone… north.

“I thought of Gretna Green, the first time,” Martin said. “Have I ever told you that before?”

Jon raised his head from the sketchpad, and Martin looked at the white cloth tied tightly around his eyes, blood staining it in places. It was because he’d tied it too tightly again, so tightly that he’d broken the skin.

“No,” Jon said quietly. “You don’t normally talk about the first time. I don’t know how I should feel about that, though – were we both sixteen in that analogy, or were we re-enacting the likes of Leo Sayer’s _Moonlighting_?”

“Oh, you were basically kidnapping me, absolutely,” Martin said, and Jon laughed, softly and quietly, as Martin made his way forward, slowly dropping to his knees beside Jon on the rug. Martin touched the paper of the sketchpad, but when he looked at it, he felt like he was tipping into the infinity of the universe itself, as if he was pouring himself through the Eye’s pupil and seeing—

Martin put the sketchpad down again on the rug, face down.

“Sorry,” Jon said. “It helps.”

“I’m glad it does,” Martin said, and he opened his arms, silently inviting Jon to tip forward and fall against Martin’s chest, which he did. His cheekbones were jagged and uncomfortable, his chin a pin-sharp jab into the soft flesh of Martin’s chest through the flannel of his pyjamas, and it made Martin laugh. “How many times?” he asked. “Have I done this?”

“You don’t really do it linearly anymore,” Jon said quietly. “It makes it difficult to keep count.”

“But you know how many times I’ve started at the beginning.”

“Half the time, Martin, you don’t start at the beginning,” Jon said, sounding amused rather than impatient. “You start at the end, or the middle. Half a dozen times, at least, you’ve done it backwards. You keep starting at the most useful bits of the moment every time.”

“Useful for what?” Martin asked.

Jon was quiet, and he splayed one hand on Martin’s chest.

“I’m not trying to be like Elias,” Jon said quietly. “I assume he’s told you already that you have to figure it out on your own. That it makes your head hurt, otherwise. That’s not untrue. It sort of cracks open your inner eye, when you get fed the knowledge instead of finding it yourself. The last time—”

“I remember the migraine,” Martin said, staring into space. “I screamed until my voice broke, and I just wheezed instead of making noise. Was it you that put me in the bath?”

“It was Daisy,” Jon answered.

“I don’t think it was her that sat in my lap in the lukewarm bathwater and let me cry into her chest.”

Jon laughed, and then he shook his head, slowly. “No,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “She sort of lifted you up and put you in the bath, and then when you started crying, she said that she’d already done more than her duty, then picked _me_ up.”

“She put you in the bath?”

“No. She just sort of… tossed me.”

Martin sniggered.

Jon leaned up on his knees, and he leaned in closer, his lips brushing against Martin’s mouth. He kissed Martin slowly, deeply, and Martin slid his fingers up into Jon’s hair, massaging his scalp. The first time, they were never in bed together, not until the cottage, not until Scotland, not until almost—

But other times, it came earlier, _this_ came earlier.

Sometimes, Martin went home with Jon instead of staying in the Archives. Sometimes, Martin and him just started… sooner.

“I can get you off,” Jon murmured against Martin’s mouth, breathing almost heavily, panting just a little. His hands were sliding down Martin’s chest, leaving hot streaks of aching desperation in their wake, feeling for the waistband of his pyjamas, dragging them down and baring skin to the air as Martin spread his legs a little wider apart, letting Jon get closer in between them. “Let me.”

“Jon—”

“Let me see,” Jon said, and some of the Archivist’s compulsion came into his voice when he said, “Let me _See_ you.”

“You know,” Martin said, breathless, his cheeks burning red as he grabbed hold of Jon’s wrists and pulled them hard above his head, feeling a thrill rush through him at the ragged noise Jon made in response, “it’s really not fair to get me turned on when all you want is for me to feed you.”

“I’m _hungry_,” Jon bit out, but there was a playful lilt in the defiance that made Martin shiver, and he showed his teeth, a little smirk, and Martin knew that he didn’t want to be fed at all. He was already overfed, Martin knew, he was _already_—

Martin shoved Jon back onto the rug, and remembered a thousand times they’d done this before, Martin’s weight over Jon’s as Jon sprawled back on the lemon-coloured fur, his back arched, his throat bared, and Martin remembered web on Jon’s wrists and rising mould over his skin, and how he looked with the flesh ripped back so that the bones would show, so that Martin could get at the organs beneath; Martin remembered Jon choking under Martin’s weight as they were both buried under earth, and the way Jon screamed so beautifully when they were falling through the expanse of the Void together, and he remembered Jon’s blankly staring eyes as Martin rubbed unknowable, impossible patterns into his back, the distant fractals traced onto his skin tangling his nerves up like earphones crammed too hastily into a pocket.

“What was your favourite?” Jon asked, and Martin kneed him in the thigh, tipping him over and shoving Jon onto his back, his hands pinned against the small of his back, his face shoved into the rug, and Jon shuddered. He never wanted Martin to touch him _sexually_, not really, but he liked this – he liked pressure, and weight, and Martin’s control.

It didn’t feed him.

It wasn’t about _feeding_ him.

Martin thought, in many ways, it was about precisely the opposite.

“The Lonely,” Martin said softly.

“What?” Jon asked, his voice just a little too sharp to be playing. “When you’d toss me into the Lonely for what felt like years, centuries, millennia on end, and I’d come out shaking and afraid and numb and cold, and when you so much as touched my _fingers_, I’d shake apart with tears, and want, and need? Begging you to stop? Begging you to never stop? Begging you to kill me, just like this?”

“I never did that to you,” Martin said, but he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice. “I never did.”

“No,” Jon said. Apology hung heavy on the word, but he didn’t say _I’m sorry_ before he said, “Peter did that to you.”

“I know,” Martin said, his voice soft, and broken, as he murmured directly in Jon’s ear. He remembered. He remembered… “But I liked it when he pulled me out, and then you were there instead.”

Martin froze, for a moment, his hands still loosely looped around Jon’s wrists, his nose still buried in the nape of his neck. It didn’t quite…

“You don’t leave your flat,” Martin said. “But you must have. To do that.”

“That was the last time,” Jon admitted, a confession that tainted the air, even as he pulled free from Martin’s hands and fell onto his back again, winding his arms around Martin’s neck and pulling Martin down on top of him. “He’d done it to you so many times before. I can’t not _See_ it, you know. But you’re not _his_ any longer. He’s dead. He has no claim on the living, and I’m tired of people touching what’s _mine_.”

It wasn’t actually Jon’s voice.

It was the Archivist’s voice, low and resonant and inhumanly possessive in a way that made Martin’s teeth ache.

“You’re not a person anymore,” Martin said softly, and he felt Jon’s lips twist into a little frown.

“Sorry,” he replied, in his own voice. Softly. With regret.

“You don’t have to be,” Martin said. “I don’t— I don’t think that I mind.”

“You should,” Jon muttered, and Martin kissed him, slid his hands up under his shirt as he did so, pressed and massaged on Jon’s stomach, felt him squirm and shiver and gasp into Martin’s mouth. “Please,” he said.

“Let _me_ see _you_,” Martin said lowly, and it was incredible, when he got to massaging every inch of Jon’s flesh that he could reach, to hear him _moan_ like that, every sound etching itself onto the inside of Martin’s skull.

His brain ticked over and over, no matter how he tried to drown his thoughts in every inch of Jon’s scarred skin.

\--

Gertrude Robinson bade him a terse “Hello,” when he came into the Institute.

“Erm,” Martin said, closing Michael’s door behind him. “Hello.”

“_Ridiculous_,” she said, gesturing to the door that wasn’t there any longer, bleeding into nothingness. “You are playing with things that would devour you alive.”

“We’ve all _been_ devoured, Ms Robinson,” Martin said. “The world’s already ended. Welcome to the digestive process.”

The old lady barked out a laugh, and it cut him as if it was a sharpened blade as she stepped forward, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin stuck out defiantly as she glared up at him, her scowl twisting her mouth.

“You are a stupid, _selfish_ boy,” she said.

“Ms Robinson, I’m not one of your assistants,” Martin said. “I’m not frightened of you. I don’t _respect_ you. You’re dead. Your opinion isn’t my problem anymore.”

Gertrude’s chin lowered, just slightly. The fury in her eyes faded somewhat in its intensity, and to his surprise, she smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.

“They keep talking about your spine,” she said lowly. “I wish you would put it to better use.”

\--

“Helen said,” Martin announced to Elias’ back, not bothering to pretend it mattered whether Elias turned around or not, “that when I asked to go through their corridors, I was using a scar as a ladder between two scarred points.”

“Yes?” Elias said expectantly. He was looking out of the window, and Martin knew without looking, somehow, that the round window was the centre of the eye on the outside of the building. With Elias looking out of it, just like this, Martin would bet that the sun was shining outside, and that the eye’s glass was shining with the rainbow.

“How can buildings be scarred?” Martin asked. “How can the ground be scarred? Or the Distortion?”

"You see," Elias said softly, "people always have this idea that only living things can be scarred - and they're right, of course. But a building is a living thing, Martin. And the ground can be scarred, too."

"I don't have any scars," Martin said. He didn’t know why it was that he said it. It was true, physically, and yet he knew that it shouldn’t be true. He should have had scars all over him – he should have had burn marks, and worm scars, and bite marks, from spiders and monsters and… He should have been scar incarnate.

"Yes, you do," Elias said, and he turned away from the window, meeting Martin’s gaze. "You just need the right light to see them."

“I did it a few times linearly,” Martin said. “How many times?”

Elias said nothing, his eyebrows arching.

“Why did I stop doing it linearly?” Martin asked. “I remember… The first time, it was the Web. And the Corruption. And the Lonely. And… But the second time, I don’t think I ever saw the Web. It went for Tim, not me – and the Corruption, it locked Sasha in her flat, not me. I got the Stranger. And I don’t… There were other times. Other things.” He remembered it all as if it had happened once, and properly. He remembered it all, except that he didn’t. He remembered…

“You get faster and faster, every time,” Elias said softly. “I was so wrong to underestimate you, in the beginning.”

Martin crossed his arms over his chest, regretting that he was still in his pyjamas and his slippers in the middle of the Institute, and Elias stepped toward Martin, his expression difficult to read as he took Martin in, looked at him critically, thoughtfully.

“Do you—” Martin shifted on his feet. “Do you really let him sleep in your bed?”

“I know one shouldn’t let one’s pets on the bed,” Elias said conversationally, a hint of amusement colouring his voice. “But he whined so pitifully in his crate I just couldn’t resist.”

“Jon said…” Martin trailed off. It felt, laughably, inappropriate to say.

Elias replied, “Peter should always have shown more caution with Jon than he did. Even now, he oversteps and receives agony for his trouble. What little patience Jon had for him, however, has now fizzled into the ether. Peter ought learn that to poke the bear means to be bitten.”

“Can’t teach a dead dog new tricks,” Martin said, and Elias laughed, quietly, darkly, with an intent that made Martin shiver.

“No,” he agreed. “No, I suppose not. Do you remember how it ended? It ended the same way, every time.”

“We were in the cottage in Scotland,” Martin said. “Or… Or my flat. Or the safehouse outside Pwllheli. Or my mum’s old house. It didn’t matter where. Sometimes, I’d be there. Sometimes, not. It was… a statement. I remember that.”

“And afterward?” Elias asked in a soft, expectant voice.

“I don’t remember,” Martin said. He didn’t meant to sound so angry, when he said it, and it made Elias smile.


	5. Chapter Four

The rain was falling upwards.

Martin knew, in a distant sort of way, that he should find that distressing, but it didn’t, not really. He was no longer upset by such little things as the world not making sense – too much had happened, too many things had changed. He’d changed, time and time again. He thought, at least – he thought he remembered the bulk of it, now.

In any case, the rain falling upwards made sense anyway.

He was falling, after all.

It was simply going the other way.

“The unfortunate fact of the end of the world,” said Mike Crew, his arms crossed over his chest, his body reposed back on the whistling air as though he were laid to rest in a coffin, “is that all the fear comes at once. You get used to it, or you die. Things like us, anyway.”

“Things like you,” Martin corrected him, trying to stop the desperate pinwheeling of his limbs, wishing he could look as calm and collected as Mike did – although, why bother? It wasn’t as if Mike Crew was someone he should worry about impressing. “I turned my back on the Beholding. And on the Lonely.”

“And on the Distortion,” Crew said mildly, glancing at his fingernails. “The Corruption, the Flesh, the Hunt, the Buried… You’ve turned your back on them all. You even turned your back on the Endless. Let it in, then walked right away. Too good to be an avatar, huh?”

“So I’m still a person,” Martin said.

Mike Crew shrugged. “You still drink tea. Still sleep in a bed. Still smile at babies. I do all of that, too.”

“I don’t really like babies,” Martin said. “Their eyes are too big. It’s creepy.”

“Their heads are just big in proportion to the rest of their bodies,” Mike said simply, giving another shrug of his shoulders. It shouldn’t have been so easy for him to shrug like that, laid on his back on streaming, infinite air. “It’s because they have such big brains – that’s where most of a human infant’s capacity goes, into its brain. It’s why humans don’t learn to walk, to talk, for so long, why they’re so helpless and dependent on their parents for so long. To allow their brains to develop.”

“That’s something else a person does,” Martin murmured, barely able to hear his own voice over the whistling, rushing air in his ears. “Read parenting books.”

“They die, too,” Mike replied, and Martin swallowed, managing to place his hands over his stomach.

“Can you— Can you put me down? Please?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “I can do that.”

\--

“Do you all remember it? When I start another loop?”

“The things that affect us, yes,” Basira said, staring down at her mug of tea and turning the spoon in it again and again. “When you were doing it in the beginning, it was… I didn’t remember it, when you started from scratch. Elias did. Jon did. We just thought that Jon was bonkers, when he— Then, around the fourth or fifth time, some things started triggering déja vu. And then we started remembering, after that, but it also went off the rails more. Less linear. We’d try to tell you, sometimes, but it never really got anything done other than split your head open.”

“And anyway, we couldn’t tell you all of it if we wanted to,” Daisy said simply, her arms crossed over her chest. “It was different, every time. I still remember the difference between the first time and other times, but other times are mixed up in my head, to be honest. And all the times that came after…”

“Some of the differences were subtle,” Martin finished for her. “But most of them were distinct. Different entities, different rituals. Different ways people died, if they were already dead, but they didn’t die if they hadn’t the first time. If they already had an allegiance with an entity, they couldn’t break it. Funny rules.”

“We’re not the ones setting them, though,” Daisy said, taking a step forward, her arms crossed over her chest, her mouth twisted in a scowl.

“What, and you’re saying I am?”

“Aren’t you?” Basira asked.

Martin walked out of the room.

\--

The memory of the end hit him in the middle of the corridor, so hard that he actually fell down on the floor. It knocked into his head with the force of freight train, but he didn’t scream. It just hit him, hard, and he staggered back, heard himself gasping even as his vision was filled with terrible, terrible _Knowing_, and he felt the pain in the back of his head as if from far away, or through a curtain.

He remembered the statement that wasn’t a statement.

The first time, he wasn’t there.

But sometimes, he was.

Sometimes, he was in the next room, puttering about, not hearing even though he was _right there_; sometimes, he heard midway through, but was too late to stop it; sometimes, he heard the precise moment that it _changed,_ and the Beholding kept him in place, forced him to Watch and See and _Know_, and be entirely unable to intervene.

The sky always blinked back, when you looked up to it, infinite and unafraid and endless. The darkness was always too dark. When you ran down a path, its lines jagged and criss-crossing and made up of impossible fractals, desperate to escape the monster slavering at your heels, and you stepped in a puddle, it would not be a puddle: it would be a chasm unimaginable and you would fall, and fall, and fall, until you were buried in dirt and it choked you, choked you—

He remembered all of it.

They were always away from the Institute, when it came.

They had to—

The first time.

The first time, they had to make the pilgrimage back. It took… it took a long time. Months, although it shouldn’t have taken _that_ long, it wasn’t that far of a distance. Or, at least, it wasn’t, before Jon read out the words that would split the word in two.

And when they got to the Magnus Institute, and stepped over the threshold—

It broke the other way.

\--

“How’s the head?” asked Gerry Keay as Martin stepped into Elias’ office. He and Elias were sitting across a table from one another, playing reversi, and it was like a basic education in opposites: Elias, clean-cut and middle-aged, in his blue jumper and his white-collared shirt and his tailored trousers; Gerard Keay, who Martin knew was in his thirties, but looked a good deal younger, in his black clothes and ripped jeans, tattoos of eyes on his joints.

“Fine,” Martin said. “What, you two are too good for chess?”

“I always mix up the pieces,” Gerry said.

“Mr Keay insists on cheating at chess,” Elias rumbled. “In any case, we alternate between games.”

“The unfortunate thing of being aligned with Beholding, Martin,” Gerry murmured, flipping over one of Elias’ tiles as he set his own down. “You always know what the other player is going to do next, unless they have the same advantage you do.”

Martin stared down at them, thinking about the end of the world, and asked, with no small amount of impatient irritation, “What days do you play Monopoly?”

“Why? Do you want to join us?” Elias asked, arching his eyebrow. “Sit on my knee?”

Martin wrinkled his nose, and Gerry laughed, his eyes flitting to land on Martin, leaning back in his chair. Elias set a disc down on the board, and Gerry frowned as he watched Elias turn over six pieces of his in a line, turning black to white.

“What, avoiding your mother to spend time with Elias?” Martin asked, and Gerry met his gaze, raising one pierced eyebrow.

“And how much are you talking to _your_ mother just about now?” he asked.

“Let’s not fight at the breakfast table, children,” Elias said, glancing up toward the ceiling. “Off you go, Mr Keay.”

“Bye-bye,” Gerry murmured, picking up his coat and slinging it around his shoulders, and he looked Martin up and down before left. It felt as if Gerry were looking into his bones, his organs, with just the cursory glance, and Martin twisted his mouth, moving to sink slowly into the seat that he’d vacated.

“You remember the end,” Elias said softly, beginning to pack the pieces into a wooden box, and Martin watched them, listened to their quiet click as they each dropped into the pile. The box was beautifully carved of varnished ebony, with gold filigree on the spine declaring its name, and the board folded in two to make up the lid. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“You know already,” Martin said, and Elias nodded his head, bringing the gameboard over to the bookshelf. Martin had never actually noticed it before, the one shelf that was made up of different woods, each with the same golden, calligraphic labels, and Elias slipped _Reversi_ into the gap – organised, of course, alphabetically. _Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Crokinole, Dominoes, Halma, Scrabble, Snakes & Ladders…_ “What’s Crokinole?”

“Peter’s favourite,” Elias said, turning away from the shelf. “Tell me.”

“He bought you those?” Martin asked, and Elias looked at him coolly for a long moment.

“He had them made.”

“Because he likes… boardgames?”

“Because he knew I would never play a boardgame with anybody else,” Elias said, “and that they couldn’t be played alone. A little ritual to make one feel one’s loneliness more keenly.”

“What, and you were alright with that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You were alright with a man who _wanted_ you to be lonely? Who wanted to rub salt in the wound? Who wanted you to hurt when he wasn’t away?”

“What I’m gathering from this interaction,” Elias said, “is that you do not want to talk about it.”

“The sky split open. The eye. The world was on fire. The world was… The world was broken. And so we came back to the Magnus Institute. We always came back to the Magnus Institute – that’s what everybody’s, everybody’s done. Because there’s a… It’s a scar here. The Institute is a scar, Jon’s apartment is a scar, they’re bits already… already worked into the world. And as long as we’re between them, we’re in a different… Plane? Reality?”

“When you entered back into the Magnus Institute,” Elias said, “you triggered a stasis, of sorts. As you say, we are extradimensionally removed from the world in which we once were. Outside of reality, and so too, outside of time, as once we knew it. Periodically, time washes back over the Institute, as liquid is swilled in a jar, but the glass still separates us from reality at large, and the damage it might do. Those in our statements, or in our lives, are, in a way, preserved here.”

“Why? So you can— So you can fix it?”

“Fix it?” Elias repeated, arching his eyebrows. “How, pray, would you fix it?”

“Do the ritual again,” Martin said, hurriedly, tapping his feet on the ground. “You could— We could do it again. I’m… It had to be Jon before, right, because he’s been touched by all the different entities? I have too. I could reverse it. I could. I’d just need… What would I need?”

“You expect me to tell you?” Elias asked, arching a graceful eyebrow. “I, who engendered the world’s end in the first place?”

“_Argh!”_ Martin snapped, and left the room.

\--

“You’re getting faster every time,” Jon said quietly when Martin came into their flat, and he opened his arms, gesturing for Martin to come and join him on the couch, but Martin shook his head, pacing on the floor.

“Why? Why would I— I mean, am I an idiot? Is that what makes time repeat itself? Me trying to fix the world?”

“No,” Jon said.

“Then— How would I…”

“I’ve already written the words you need to say,” Jon said quietly. “They’re in that green-bound book on the bookshelf, the notebook, there next to your little bust of Spock.”

“It’s _Sarek_,” Martin said. “You know that.”

“If you say so.”

“So I… I say those words, right? And I’m already marked by the entities. And it— It puts them back?”

“It… It would sort of be happening at the same time as the original ritual I did. They’d happen in concert with one another, meaning that mine would be rendered null in the moment. You and I, and Elias, we would remember all that had happened, in this place, but the rest would be… as it was. I don’t know if other mass rituals could be performed, but the damage from mine would be undone.”

“You know all this very well,” Martin said.

“We’ve had this conversation many times, Martin,” Jon said.

“So— So why haven’t I done it?”

Jon breathed in, long and slow, and put out his arms again.

“Come sit down, Martin,” Jon said softly, and Martin heaved in a gasp, shaking his head, feeling the tears burn at the corners of his eyes.

“_Why_—”

“Think about,” Jon said, “where else is scarred.”

\--

“Ah, there you are, Martin,” Nan said, and Martin sat dumbly down on a chair as he watched her pour a cup of tea. In the other room, he could see Mum asleep on the sofa, her chest rising and falling under the blanket, the television letting lights flicker over her face, but with the volume turned down to zero.

“She used to love the _A-Team_,” Martin said. The TV was the one he remembered in Nan’s house, big and black and never dusty at all, even though the one at home always seemed to get dusty at the back – or at least, when Nan came over, she always managed to find dust. Mum used to hate that. “You know, you’re not— You’re not real. You’re just a version of you I’ve made up in my head.”

“No,” Nan said, “I’m a composite of the experiences of innumerable timelines, suspended in this timeless netherdimension, same as you, dear. Unaging, undying. My funeral happened, but then, it also didn’t. There’s leeway.”

Martin stared at her.

“That little boyfriend of yours is very terse in his explanations. Gets even shorter if he has to give them more than once,” Nan said. “Did you know that?”

“Erm,” Martin said, glancing down at his knees. “Yeah.”

“Mmm,” Nan said, and Martin took the tea she pushed over, taking a sip.

“Why are you— You and Mum were never…”

“We’re part of you,” Nan said, simply. “Enough that we… _scarred_, I suppose.”

“Jon’s grandmother, too?”

“I believe so,” Nan said. “I’ve never met the woman.”

“I think— I think maybe I have,” Martin said, but the memory was hazy, until it wasn’t. He remembered a skinny, tiny woman in beautiful saris, saying that Jon had to start being nicer if he wanted to deserve such a nice boy. “Yeah. So is that why— Is that why I haven’t…”

He turned his head, looking at his mother on the couch.

“She hated me,” he said. “Once I… Once I grew up. Because I looked like my dad. I was too much like him. That’s what Elia— That’s what Elias said.”

“Yes,” Nan said. “I’m sorry, Martin. That wasn’t fair.”

“And even when she got sick, she wouldn’t… She _couldn’t_ talk to me, half the time, and even when she could, she wouldn’t. The Huntington’s was too far gone, and half the time she’d just _scream_ at me, she’d get so angry, and tell me to— Whenever she… Why would I want to keep _that_? She’ll just be worse, without the… She’ll see me, and hate me. Why’s that worth keeping the world on ice for?”

“Who told you that was the reason?” Nan asked.

\--

The corridors were black as pitch, and thick with smoke that Martin was too stubborn to let make him cough.

“Are you going to fix the world, Maaartin?” Michael asked, walking along beside him, having to twist itself in knots to keep pace with him, because its legs were far too long to manage it, otherwise. “Are you going to piece it back together and _glue it_ in place?”

“Not now, Michael,” Martin said.

“Hello, Martin!” said Jane Prentiss, and Martin was so impatient he actually shoved her out of the way, the worms making a popping sound as they sizzled on the superheated air. Martin’s coat was smoking as he slammed the door shut behind him.

“I haven’t done it,” Martin said as he moved into Elias’ office. “Why not? Why not? _Why not!?”_

“No need for a tantrum,” Elias said mildly, and he closed the door behind Martin, gesturing for Martin to sit in front of Elias’ desk. Martin didn’t, choosing to pace instead, but he took the mug of tea when Peter pressed it into his hands.

Jon was sitting at the little table on the other side of the room, his head leant against the heels of his hand. Martin could see the bloodstains on his cheeks, and the scabbing around the blindfold. Martin drank the tea, and then spat it out.

Elias took the mug from his hands, and replaced it with another, which didn’t taste like it had been made with brine.

“Why haven’t I done it?” Martin asked.

“It’s your choice, sweetheart,” Peter said. “Why don’t you tell us?”

“Touch him,” Jon said in a dark, foreboding voice as Peter’s hand reached out, “and you will regret it.”

Peter’s smile remained neatly painted on his face, but the hand drew back, and Martin moved past him to sit beside Jon, sinking down onto the hard, uncomfortable pressure of Elias’ leather seat cushions. Jon reached out, gently stroking over the back of his neck.

“It’s— It’s nice,” Martin said. “That people who were dead are alive, that’s… that’s lovely, that’s nice, but it’s not— It’s not _real_. It’s not the _world_. There’s no time. People aren’t really alive, here, nobody is – no one is living.”

Elias and Peter looked at him, silently, Elias with his solemn expression, Peter with his cheerful one. Jon, beside him, said nothing.

“But—” Martin said, and swallowed, hard. “I suppose… Nobody’s dying, either. No one’s suffering, really, not like they… The suffering’s already happened. I know the times make things different, but it’s… None of it’s permanent.”

Jon leaned his cheek against Martin’s shoulder.

“You have to go,” he said, “to the house on Hilltop Road. It’s the— You called it something, a few times before. Scar incarnate. Like you, like me. You have to read out the words. And it… If you start, then stop, it will glitch. Turn time over again.”

“Can we— I just want to go home,” Martin said. “For a while.”

Jon patted his knee.

“We can do that,” he said.

“Can’t put it off forever, you know,” Peter said, putting his hand on Elias’ shoulder. “You Beholding types are all the same. Just aren’t men of action, are you?”

“I’m not Beholding,” Martin said. “I’m not a monster.”

“You will be,” Peter said, with a grin. “If you do it.”

\--

“Is that why I won’t do it?” Martin asked. “Because I’m too selfish? Because I don’t want to give up being a person? Because—”

“You aren’t selfish,” Jon said softly. “It’s not that.”

“Then— Then just to keep a few people on i— just to…”

“It isn’t about them not dying,” Jon said. “It’s about… You’ve explained before. Like you said, there’s no permanency here. No one lives, really, but no one dies, either. And everyone can… It isn’t that no one is suffering, Martin, in the literal sense. But in comparison to the lives our friends have been living? They _aren’t_ suffering. That the already-dead aren’t dead is just a bonus.”

“My… My mum’s still ali— And my nan. And _your_ nan. And _Tim_, and Sasha, and—”

“There’s actually too many to list,” Jon said. “But… You know, Tim has Danny. Daisy’s okay, as is Basira. Elias Bouchard, Gertrude Robinson, James Wright, Gerry Keay, Mary Keay, Mike Crew, Michael, Jurgen Leitner, Jared Hopworth… A lot of Magnus employees, who died, or who just workd here. The Lukases, they’re all alive. Naomi Herne has her husband back… but they’re out at Moorwood. Swings and roundabouts, Martin.”

Martin lay on his side, looking at Jon and his cloth-covered face, his arms crossed over his chest.

“How long will it last? This?”

“I don’t know,” Jon murmured, reaching out, gently touching his cheek.

“Isn’t it— Isn’t it wrong? For me to keep us all like this? To _not _save the world, to not fix it?”

“The world is beyond right or wrong, at the moment,” Jon said. “If you want to keep the world like this for a little longer, to relax, to sleep in bed with me, and know that none of us is going to be killed tomorrow, then you can have that certainty. And if you want to fix everything… You can. You won’t be killing anybody that isn’t already dead, Martin. You won’t be hurting anybody who isn’t already hurt. You’ll just be putting the world back together, and everyone can start _living_ again. Yes, people will suffer, and die. But— We’ll eat food. We’ll walk in the park. We’ll work more hours than we should. I will, anyway.”

Martin laughed, and it sounded slightly mad to his own ears, until Jon stroked a palm gently over his forehead.

“I won’t be a person anymore,” he said. “If I do it. I’ll be… I’ll be like you. Beholding?”

“Leaning toward Lonely, I think,” Jon said. “Or— Web, maybe. A mix, anyway. You won’t be like one of us, you won’t be firmly in one camp. I think you could be, if you wanted. But this… This is a stasis. It will last for a while longer.”

“I’d feel guilty,” Martin said. “If I just… If I just relaxed, and lived like this, without— I’d feel guilty.”

“I know,” Jon said, and then added, his voice soft and not at all unkind, “but you keep forgetting.”

\--

“I’m going to the house on Hilltop Road,” Martin said, and Elias looked at him. “But you— You don’t want me to, do you? You don’t want me to do it. You did that ritual, you made it happen, and it wasn’t what you wanted. And you had to lose Peter for it, you had to lose everything for it, and you wished you hadn’t, don’t you? You regret it, now.”

“I don’t want for you to do anything but what you wish to do, Martin,” Elias said softly, his expression unchanging. “I have given you all the tools you require to reverse the ritual, as I did Jon to create it.”

“But you regret it, don’t you?” Martin demanded. “You regret it?”

Elias said nothing, and Martin grabbed for his coat.

When he walked up Hilltop Road, it was through a parting crowd of thousands, and he—

He didn’t mean to do it, when he faltered over the words, even though he’d never had trouble reading aloud before. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d do on purpose.

He didn’t think so, at least.


	6. Epilogue

“What do they do there?” Martin asked, and his mother looked over his head. Her gaze was blank as she looked at the looming shape of the Magnus Institute, the sandstone yellow in the wan light of the wet day.

“What?” his mother demanded, irritable.

“That’s the Magnus Institute,” said Elias, looking down at the little boy clutching tight to his mother’s hand, and he stared up at Elias. He was so small like this, and his face looked so strange, unscarred, relatively unfreckled. His lips were parted. “They collect information and artefacts that are to do with the supernatural. Do you know what is?”

“Um,” Martin said, “it’s a manifestation or happening that can’t be explained by the… that has to be attributed to forces that aren’t explainable by scientific study, or the laws of nature.”

“Very good,” Elias said softly. “Studying a dictionary recently, are you?”

“I’m learning a lot of new words,” Martin said.

“If you study very hard indeed,” Elias said, “you might work there, one day.”

Martin looked back toward the building, and said, in a very soft voice, “I think I’d like that.”

“We’re going to be late,” the mother said irritably, and she glared at Elias, her lips twisting into a sharp frown. “_Thank you_, sir,” she said, with all the venom she could inject into the three words, and Elias watched her go. Martin looked back at him, though, his mouth open, his expression…

“Beg him not to put the toys you threw around back in the box, did you?” Peter asked, his hand sliding over Elias’ hip, and Elias let Peter drag him closer, let his palms fall against Peter’s chest to steady himself, to keep from losing his balance. If he did lose his balance, Peter would always drop him. Any excuse to bridal carry Elias in front of the most embarrassing audience he could find. “You don’t want him to fix it, hm? You want it all to stay the same, forever and ever?”

Elias looked up into Peter’s blue-green, sea-froth eyes, let Peter’s ridiculously big hand, with its coarse palm, its strong fingers, cup his cheek as though Elias were something fragile, in need of holding tenderly.

“Don’t want to be all on your own, do you? Why should the world go on turning when you can have it like this for a little bit longer? You’re no better than your Archivist, you know. Sitting in the dark with your blindfold on, however metaphorical it is.”

Peter was smiling. He always smiled, when he had Elias like this. He always smiled, as though he weren’t dead, as though he didn’t care. He _must_ care, he must do, and yet he never showed it. Elias couldn’t tell if it were stubbornness or affection for Elias that made him hide it. He cupped Elias’ cheeks, both of them, now, and dragged his thumbs over Elias’ cheekbones.

When Elias’ fingers alighted against the back of Peter’s wrist, Peter’s grin grew wider. The silence spanned between them.

“Nasty little trick, you know,” Peter said. “Poking about in the young chap’s head like that, making him stutter and stammer. He’s getting so quick with it, too. All that, just for a little bit longer?”

Elias looked at Peter’s chest instead of at his eyes, loosely winding his hand around Peter’s wrist, his thumb against the pulse point that still softly beat beneath the touch of his thumb, the skin still warm, and livid, and alive.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Peter said, without sympathy. “I’m dead. You gave the world to your god, and it wasn’t worth it. None of it was worth it, and you’re _all _alone. You have to accept it sometime.”

“Just a little bit longer, Peter,” Elias said.

“Come on,” Peter murmured, interlinking their fingers and leading him up the steps, back into the scarred safety of the Institute, where no time flowed. “A game of Crokinole, and we’ll go to bed. Tell me you love me, and maybe we’ll even go for a little dance on the _Tundra_.”

“I love you, Peter,” Elias said, and Peter actually turned his head, his lips parting, surprise plain on his face. For a fraction of a second, Elias saw the ghost of real, genuine pain in his eyes, and then it was gone again, filed neatly away wherever Peter kept that sort of inconvenience.

“Just a little bit longer, then,” he murmured, and the doors closed behind them.

The Institute was empty, and the two of them were alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave feedback!! I'm always desperate for a response in this fandom. 😅

**Author's Note:**

> For the time being, I'm no longer writing fanfic: I publish original works now. 
> 
> My debut novel, Heart of Stone, is a slice-of-life romance between a vampire and his personal secretary, and I hope it's the first of many. 
> 
> You can check out more about my published work [here](https://johannesevans.tumblr.com/post/629449536272826368/landing-page). I am also on Twitter. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your support and your wonderful feedback on my fanfic! It's been essential in pushing myself to move toward original work.


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